Welcome to the world of Crest. A tribal simulation game where your followers look to you for wisdom and guidance. Direct your people through pictographic commandments. Show them the path to a righteous and virtuous existence or force them into a chaotic state of being if a single word you utter happens to fall on deaf ears. You choose their fate.

"We ask tough questions through our games and let the players explore the answers." This is the creed that creative studio Eat Create Sleep live by. Clearly, this studio is working out a system for how the world is simulated and the thought process of the one in control. This is the second simulation title that this company has released. Though this company may be small and relatively new, they seem to have big ideas and aspirations.

The point of the game is to "express yourself through your people". Issue them commandments for how they should live their life and go through their daily activities. Those commandments are sometimes received more as guidelines. People will use free will to slightly change the rules their god has laid out for them. Or they may completely disagree with them. At this point, it's up to you (as their god) to either correct their course (Oh if only you could smite them!) or allow them to proceed with their new path to happiness.

Crest contains many of the tried and true element of sandbox-style games such as gatherable resources, indicators for happiness and wellbeing, micromanagement, an expanding economy, and much more. What sets this game apart from most simulation games is that the humans you rule over have some semblance of free will.

Eat Create Sleep seems dedicated to updating the game and fixing bugs that have been found by community members. For instance, they have adjusted the aggression of hippos early on in the game (they used to attack villagers too often). They've also added various monuments that villagers can build to boost their esteem. They've also implemented "remnants of the world" which means that remains of animals or buildings are left behind (for a short period) after they've been destroyed. This gives a bit of depth to the game's events and how they feel over time. Improvements are steadily coming in over the course of Crest's development, even post-official release.

The beauty of Crest is that there is no set story for you to follow. As a god, you take control of the world and the people living within it. You create the narrative according to your whims and desires. The world is your oyster in this sandbox game. Take advantage of it and fabricate a plot that is interesting and entertaining to you.

The aesthetic of the game is pleasing and calming. The sound is very immersive. The nature sounds make it feel like you’re in a very primitive civilization in ancient times. The artwork is vibrant and lively. With a few exceptions, the style, designs, and animation flow well together. One thing that was jarring was very low polygon count of the clouds passing overhead throughout the day. It felt out of place and drew us out of the immersion of the game. Some of the designs are inconsistent. Even though everything is designed very simply some of the animals, for instance, have jarring features because of the low polygon count or shape of their features.

Let's talk a bit about how the game works. You have to make commandments for your followers to go about their daily lives. A commandment consists of three words in total, two nouns, and 1 verb. You basically need a condition, an action, and a target. You choose an area from which the followers of the place will follow the Commandments, then you choose an action you want them to perform, and then you choose what you want them to perform it on. Writing a commandment uses up influence points.

Influence points are the currency that you use to give you edicts to the people. Commandments cost influence points and you also use them to erase previous commandments. You generally want to erase previous commandments if the people no longer need to do that particular action. One way you accumulate influence is by having the people in particular villages be faithful to your commandments. So if people generally don’t agree with what you told him to do they will lose faith in you and then you will not have the ability to initiate more commandments in the future. You gain influence points naturally as time progresses but you gain bonus influence every half cycle depending on how much faith the people have in you. Check with the needs of a given village are and that way you can make an admin so I helped him fill the things that are central to them.

Once your people have been properly cared for, you can have them migrate to different areas on the island that they started out on or different islands entirely. Each village has different reactions to the commandments that you have put forth. Keep checking what you’ve told them and how they interpreted it so that they continue living in accordance with your wishes. Clicking on village opens up a set of tabs associated with that location. In the diplomacy tab, you can see how one village feels towards the people living in a different village. For example, one set of people may be indifferent to their neighboring village while that neighbor village has a strong sense of hatred for the first village. Some followers will even go as far as to kill other people living in the same village. So it’s up to you to keep an eye on those type of interactions and to punish or encourage the people according to your wishes.

Crest does give you a bit of helpful advice for managing the world. You can listen to some of your followers known as advisors and they will give you some advice about what the people are feeling or thinking. They also give general advice on how to make informed decisions within the game. If you want to review previous commandments that you gave your people or various interactions that I’ve already taken place you can look those up on the timeline. It’s a decent way to go back and look at mistakes you made or misinterpretations from your followers and try to correct those for the future. Luckily you don’t have to keep track of every single commandment because over time they will expire on their own. So it’s a good habit to periodically check the commandments that are currently active and decide if you want to keep those in place, adjust those according to the people‘s needs and your play style, or just let them play out naturally.

One way to check your progress is to look click on the discovery icon located on your list of words. Here you can see the words that you’ve unlocked according to the tier that they belong to. Also, you can see requirements you need in order to unlock new words. Remember that words are the only way that you can begin issuing new types of commandments to the people. So they are extremely important.

Once your followers start thriving, they begin to increase their expertise level in certain skills. This marks the transition from early game to mid/late game mechanics and interactions. Small buildings within your village will begin to emerge. Those buildings provide bonuses to a particular skill. For example, a building can you give a bonus to construction which gives a reduction in the amount of time it takes to complete a new building. Another building may give you bonus ore when mining. Picking up skills will grant you new words for commandments, which in turn give you new interactions with the land, people, or animals. Accumulating these elements are where you'll receive the majority of your pleasure and amusement.

The biggest drawback was the tutorial. The explanation of how the game works and how to use commandments feels overwhelming at first. It strips you of the energy and enjoyment of figuring out the game slowly as you play. They should severely limit the type of interactions that happen early on in the game and take those opportunities to explain what just took place. That would be a better system. As it stands now, some of the needs of your people are not clearly explained. So it’s difficult to figure out how you should take care of their needs. Hint: constructing monuments provides your villagers with the esteem that they yearn for.

We found that there are, generally speaking, two of the fundamental ways to enjoy this game (or most simulation games). You either focus on the macro management and goals you want to achieve as a god with the world at your fingertips. Or you can focus on the little interactions that villagers have with each other with people of other villages or how they interact with the animals and in their region. It’s actually quite satisfying to see some of your followers use their free will and intelligence. For example one of your followers may see that the village is in need of food so they construct a boat and start spearfishing along the coast to catch food for their people. That’s an example of a small surprise that keeps the game enjoyable and fresh. Something else that’s funny to see is people dancing in the middle of your village. Dancing is how villagers or animals for that matter procreate in this game. So at times you’ll see two hippos, for instance, dancing in your village with little heart shaped icons above their heads and that means that they’re producing a child. It gave us a small chuckle the first time we saw it.

There were some small nuisances within Crest as well. Inconsistent designs and bumpy tutorial were present, however, they weren't enough to deter us from enjoying this indie, sandbox gameplay. This is a game that any simulation fan can enjoy.

Thanks for taking the time to read our thoughts on Eat Create Sleep's latest game, Crest. It's an amusing game worthy of any gamer interested in simulation titles. Definitely, check this one out on Steam. If you've played this game we'd like to hear your thoughts in the comments section or on Twitter. Don't be shy! We'll see you guys in the next article. Have a great day!